18th August 2006 - Day Nine

Today, I woke up in Banff.

What a view. Outside were the wonderous mountains, lined with trees and topped with crisp white snow.

The plan for today was to visit Lake Louise, and then travel to Kamloops for the night.

We made it to Lake Louise, and it was an amazing site, as ever. This time was made different by the fact that we went on the canoes, and paddled up the lake. My sister and I took one canoe and my brother and Muj took another. We got a fair bit up the lake before we had to turn back.

After that we headed off for the Columbian Ice fields. We stopped at Saskatchewan Crossing for a breather, then carried on up the hill. My dad has a fear of heights, so my mum took over the driving but before long we noticed that we were very low on fuel. We stopped to discuss our options and decided to drive back to The Crossing, fuel up a bit, the drive back to Lake Louise and continue across to Kamloops and try and stop there for the night. This, in total, lost us about 2 hours which would have been useful towards the end of the day...

We continued driving down Highway 1 and after about 3 or 4 hours we ended up driving through a town called Ravelstoke. Since it was quite late we thought that we'd look for somewhere to stay the night but as usual, everything was booked.

We went to a small restaurant for some food and just happened to be served by one of the women that works at the information desk for Ravelstoke. She gave us a list of hotels that we could ring and we eventually found a hotel a little way out from Ravelstoke that had a room available.

We finished our pizza there, and then headed off to the hotel that gave us keys to a sort of loft conversion. There was a double bed and 2 bunk beds in the main room, and 2 seperate rooms off to the sides. These side rooms had their own TV, bed, and toilet, and one of them had a second shower. Of course, I was stuffed into the room that didn't have the shower, but it was good to get a bit of privacy, and to get away from my brother's snoring!

Thus ends day 2 of the journey from Edmonton to Vancouver.